WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama’s top aides considered replacing Vice President Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign but decided it would not significantly help, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing a new book about the campaign.

It was often rumored but always denied by officials that the Obama team was thinking of replacing Biden with then-Secretary of State Clinton.

According to the Times account of the book Double Down by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Obama’s top aides secretly had extensive focus-group sessions and polling conducted to consider such a move.

They ultimately decided that adding Clinton would not materially improve Obama’s odds, according to the account.

The White House chief of staff at the time, William Daley, told the Times: “I was vocal about looking into a whole bunch of things, and this was one of them.”

“You have to remember, at that point the president was in awful shape, so we were like, ‘Holy Christ, what do we do?'” Daley said.

With Biden on the ticket, Obama decisively defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the November 2012 election.

The book also says Obama found Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, to be exhausting, and that when the two of them golfed together in September 2011 in an effort aides hoped would bring them together, they did not finish 18 holes.

“I like him … in doses,” Obama told an aide after the round at Andrews Air Force Base, according to the Times account of the book.

WASHINGTON – The US Senate Intelligence Committee approved legislation on Thursday to tighten controls on the government’s sweeping electronic eavesdropping programs, but allows them to continue.

In a classified hearing, the panel voted 11-4 for a measure that puts new limits on what intelligence agencies can do with bulk communications records and imposes a five-year limit on how long they can be retained.

Despite growing national concern about surveillance, the “FISA Improvements Act” would not eliminate the program, which became public earlier this year when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked information that the government collects far more internet and telephone data than previously known.

“The NSA call-records program is legal and subject to extensive congressional and judicial oversight, and I believe it contributes to our national security. But more can and should be done to increase transparency and build public support for privacy protections in place,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

The act also requires the special court that oversees the collection programs to designate outside officials to provide independent perspective and assist in reviewing matters that present novel or significant interpretations of the law.

It also requires Senate confirmation of the National Security Agency director and inspector general.